Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Is Empowerment Good?

    I remember my boss having a secretary that used to take his dictation down.

    When I started working in business, PCs were just coming to use in the company where I worked. Not everyone had a computer, which may shock some of you. We had shared computers in some places, and there were people whose jobs didn’t require computers, if you can believe that. The world has changed since then, and having access to some computing device is almost required at every level of business these days, from delivery drivers to warehouse workers to the CEO.

    One of the anachronistic events you might see in older films or book was the idea of an executive calling a secretary into their office to dictate a memorandum or letter. I’ve actually witnessed that event, though it’s a faded memory that I barely recall. As technology evolved, we found more and more people could handle their own work, typing and proofing their own letters, calling up their own reports, and reading their own correspondence. That seems to be much more efficient, allowing one person to do the work that two might have done before, but is that correct?

    When you ask for a report, or dictate a letter, you are delegating that work. You can let it go, and spend your time thinking about the content or analyzing the data without worrying about the mechanics. It’s easy to pick up a report, but it’s also easy to get bogged down in worrying about which options to pick, or experimenting with a few options, going back and forth. I shudder to think of how much time someone spends formatting, changing fonts, or customizing their work in Word, Powerpoint, etc. when they could be applying knowledge to a process.

    Technology is a great enabler, but too often we think that just enabling someone with more options, choices and settings is a worthwhile exercise. Technology ought to make things easier, and allow us to concentrate more on the work we need to do. If  it requires more work from us, especially because it’s given us too many choices, I’m not sure it’s been implemented well.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Create Your Own Intense Interview

    Are you unhappy in your job? Do you work too many hours? Is the work environment causing you stress or unhappiness? In all of those situations, I counsel people to look for another job. Make a plan to move on to another position, or even another career field or industry. It can be hard, it can be a struggle, it can take time but we work to live, not the other way around.

    It always amazes me how quickly people settle for jobs, choosing the first position they can possibly get, regardless of the potential pitfalls or even known problems with the position. I know many people have bills and obligations, but you will spend a lot of your life in a job. Doesn’t it make sense to try and find a job that you enjoy, or fulfills you in some way. Or at least a job you enjoy going to most days?

    It’s hard to find a new job. It’s hard for companies to find employees that will fit into the organization and stay a long time. I’d think that most of us on either side of the interview table would want to be sure that we are entering into a good relationship. Companies ask lots of questions to try and learn about the candidate; candidates should do the same thing. Create an intense interview, one where you probe the company as hard as they probe you to determine the shape, scope, and size of the position. You don’t need to be adversarial to do this, but be thorough and do not be afraid to ask questions.

    I heard from a friend recently that went on an interview, and had done some research beforehand. This person jotted thoughts and questions in a notebook, took it to the interview, and made notes as the session progressed. I had never done that, but it makes sense, and I think I’d do that in the future.

    I do not treat interviews as some contest I have to win by impressing people. It’s a mutual meeting to determine if we want to do business together, and that mindset has served me well over the years.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • A Break from Data

    The Avengers
    The Avengers is an excellent movie

    This Friday is the start of the Memorial Day holiday in the US. Many companies allow employees time off, making this a long weekend to celebrate the start of summer. Cooking outside and camping have been ways in which my family has enjoyed the holiday in the past, though this year we are likely to spend most of the weekend tending to the plant life around the ranch. For me that means hours in the tractor seat as I try to get the grass under control.

    One of the other traditions we have had is seeing a movie over the weekend. This is one of the times that potential blockbusters are usually released. The Avengers movie opened a few weeks ago, and my kids were excited to go see it. In fact, we saw it twice in two week and enjoyed it immensely. This weekend, I suspect that Men in Black 3 will receive a few votes from the kids for a family outing.

    It’s Friday, and many of you will be looking forward to a break from work for a few days, and I wanted to ask what you might recommend to everyone else out there for a break.

    Which science fiction films, either in theaters or at home, would you recommend from the past year?

    I haven’t seen Battleship, but I did enjoy The Hunger Games earlier this year. I saw Lockout with my son, and while it wasn’t much of a movie, it was entertaining for us. Prometheus is on the horizon, and looks interesting. For now, I have to recommend The Avengers if you haven’t seen it, and perhaps the third Transformers movie, which I watched a few months ago.

    Let us know what you like. I will also recommend the remake of Battlestar Gallactica, which I have been watching on Netflix over the last 6 months or so as a run sci fi series that entertains me.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Making New Infrastructure Investments

    server room build
    Will we do away with much of this data center build out with cloud services available?

    I was at a cloud conference recently, learning about the different ways in which people are starting to use cloud services. To be clear, I know that the cloud is nothing new, but it does have the potential to change the way we make decisions about infrastructure, and it absolutely will change the way we invest in IT if we choose to use cloud services.

    I had the chance to talk with three companies that were using the cloud. One was a startup that had foregone all investment in IT infrastructure. They had laptops for employees and one local server to keep copies of development code, but the rest of their “IT stuff” was in the cloud. As a new company, with no existing hardware, this makes sense. Their ability to offload all the sysadmin work meant that their developers didn’t have to worry about IT services; they just wrote code.

    The second company was a small company, one with some servers, but a growing company. They decided to move their email and document management to the cloud (in Office 365) rather than invest in bigger servers to handle the load. They maintained a local Sharepoint server, a development server, SQL databases, etc., but their decision to use cloud services was based on the desire to limit their future investment in computer hardware, and potentially additional staff.

    The last company surprised me. They were an established, medium sized company, and they used a few services in the cloud, like Salesforce, but they also moved some of their customer applications to the cloud. Why? They had a fairly unpredictable spike in traffic multiple times a month. They could have invested in hardware to handle the spikes, but they would have had that hardware idle quite often. Instead they maintain a small set of cloud server, growing them inside of a few hours when spikes occur, and trimming them down quickly when they are no longer needed.

    The cloud isn’t for every application. However there are probably more applications than you might expect that fit it well. As with any hyped technology, it pays to learn about the pros, cons, and potential resource costs to incorporate it and then making a case with your management for or against it’s inclusion in your IT tool belt.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.